Hi I'm Philip Newey, author and editor. Here are some thoughts, ideas and other nonsense. I may, at times, express some views that offend some readers. I make no apologies for that. Read on at your own risk. Be sure to also visit my writer's page: http://philipnewey.com. I also run a manuscript services business called All-read-E: http://philipnewey.com/All-read-E.htm

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Nothing about the
world in which we live is simple. Whether we are talking about the physical
laws underlying the universe, the biological and evolutionary processes
determining life on earth, or the complex psychosocial world of human
behaviour... Everything is very messy and very complicated.

Part of the scientific
method involves simplifying certain complex processes so that they can be
partially understood. For example, in order to model complex processes such as
weather patterns or climate, simplifications are made. It is impossible to account for every
variable, so some attempt is made to identify the most important factors. In
experimental science, hypotheses are tested under controlled conditions, as
much as possible. This means that conditions are created in which only one or a
few variables can influence the outcome of the experiment. This is an attempt
to exclude the many thousands of other factors that can influence events in
uncontrolled conditions. Science always arrives at a simplified view of
reality. This is a necessary and constructive process, without which we would
be floundering in the chaos that is reality.

Human beings take the
same approach in the psychosocial realm: we generalise and simplify. We give
things names and we group them together. Consider an object with four legs
supporting a level platform above the ground. There are a vast number of such
objects, and it would be utter chaos if every single one of them had to be
assigned its own, unique name. So we generalise, we draw out common features,
and all such objects we designate by the term ‘table’. We are even able to
accommodate objects with more or fewer legs under the same term. This is a very
useful exercise.

Nevertheless, having
carried out this procedure, we do not then draw the incorrect conclusion that
all tables are the same. Nor do we think that we have completely and
comprehensively defined an object by calling it a table. Is it a wooden table
or a plastic table or a metal table? Is it round or is it square? How tall or
long is it? What colour is it? We are able to accommodate these differences and
acknowledge and value these nuances within the framework of ‘table’. When it
suits us, we can do that.

We can also choose not
to.

Racism, sexism and
other ‘isms’ are cases in which we choose not to.

In such cases we
choose to ignore or devalue the differences and nuances, and convince ourselves
that all ‘tables’ are the same. Once a ‘table’, always a ‘table’. A ‘table’
never changes its... erm... spots. You can never trust a ‘table’. I’m not furniturist,
but, you know, it’s not fair that ‘tables’ get all the tablecloths.

We need structure in
the world, and names and categories help provide some of that structure.
Unfortunately, we abuse such structures when it suits us, when it becomes
convenient to ignore difference and nuance, to score political points. I’m not even the same as me from one day to the next, so it is
silly in the extreme to think that all ‘tables’ are the same.

At its best, science recognises
that its knowledge of the world is provisional. What we know and understand
today is only an approximation of what the world is really like. Furthermore, it is the exceptions, the
counter-examples—the things that don’t quite fit in the box—that serve to
expand our knowledge of the world. In the myth of the Garden of Eden, God gave
to Adam the task of naming all the animals. But naming something is only the
beginning, not the end, of fully understanding and appreciating it.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

I recently read The Luminaries (Granta), the very long
and complex novel by New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton, which won the Man
Booker Prize in 2013. It’s a very well-written book, although not one that I
particularly enjoyed. The reason I mention it here is because it pleases me to
think that a book of this type—some 832 pages in length, written in a
pseudo-Victorian style, with a very complex formal structure—can find a
publisher in this day and age. It can go on to win major literary awards, and
also sell quite well. It’s not a best-seller, I guess, in that it probably did
not make the NYT best-seller list—if it did, please correct me—and it may not
have reached the Amazon top 100—again correct me if I am wrong. But I believe
that as of August this year it had sold well in excess of half a million
copies. I wouldn’t be whinging if one of my books sold a tenth as many.

I also recently read Burial Rites (Picador) by Hannah Kent,
another novel which would hardly be considered mainstream or commercial. Again,
it is great that there are still publishers willing to invest in books which
have artistic merit, without necessarily having guaranteed market success.
Having said that, I think a movie of Burial
Rites is at least in the development stage; I believe a mini-series is
planned for The Luminaries. So there
is probably even money to be made from non-mainstream fiction too, for those
who are ready to take the chance on it.

I often complain about
the quality of the books that emerge from mainstream publishers. They seem to
cater mainly to the current fad, with little regard for literary quality. While
I can understand that publishing is first and foremost a business these days, I’m
sure there is room within the publishing world to invest some of the profits
from the blockbuster best-sellers into projects which may not have best-seller
potential, but which nevertheless have artistic, cultural and literary value.
There will even be a few of these that, perhaps surprisingly, more than pay
their way.

It’s also pleasing to
realise that there are plenty of readers out there who are willing to work a little
harder, and don’t necessarily want their books to mimic movies and/or video
games.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

In the supermarket
today I wanted to buy a comb. Just one, plain, simple, ordinary comb. You would
think that wasn’t too much to ask. But no. I couldn’t buy a comb. I had to buy
a pack of four different combs, for three of which I had no use whatsoever. So
I would have to pay $3 for a comb that should have cost me... let’s say, $1.

The marketing company
would probably say that I was saving money by buying the four combs because if
I had bought all four combs separately it might have cost me... I don’t know...
let’s say, $5. So, by buying the pack of combs I was saving $2!

How many times are we
persuaded by advertising to buy something we neither want nor need, because the
thing we want plus the thing we don’t want, together cost less than if we
bought them separately... but more than if we simply bought the thing we
wanted. I can buy four punnets of strawberries for $5, when they cost $1.50
each. So I save a dollar. Except that... I actually only want two punnets of
strawberries which would only cost me $3. So, I buy the four punnets—what a
bargain!—and either eat more strawberries than I actually want to eat, or the
two unwanted punnets rot in the fridge.

And it’s even worse
when I don’t even appear to have a choice. I now have the task of searching
other supermarkets and stores to find a single comb... one single, ordinary
comb. The main competitors will probably sell the same four-pack of combs. A
smaller store may have a single comb, but charge two or three times what it is
worth. And, in the end, it will cost me extra time and money to find just that
comb. How much time and effort am I actually prepared to put in? In the end I
will probably cave in and buy the four-pack.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Hello, world. I know
the rest of you out there probably don’t care much about Australia and
Australian politics. No, not Austria, Australia.
Many of you probably don’t know where Australia is (take a peek down there at
the bottom right of most world maps). Most of you probably think Melbourne or
Sydney is the capital city. I’m sure many of you think ‘Alf’ from Home and Away is our prime minister. Or
Crocodile Dundee. Or Dame Edna Everage. Okay, many of you probably don’t know
who any of those people are. Although more of you might have heard of them than
of our actual Prime Minster, a certain Tony Abbott. Yes, I get it: when I talk
about Australian politics and politicians, most of the world doesn’t even
bother stifling its yawn.

But think of us down
here. Please think of us and the burden we bear. Tony Abbott is almost
fifty-seven years old (in November), a few months younger than me. So, a mature
adult with lots of experience, right? Unfortunately we have a national leader
who has a vastly inflated sense of his own importance on the world stage and of
his place in history. We have a leader who prides himself on reducing very
serious national and world issues to two and three word slogans. You can read
the delight on his face when he comes up with his latest slogan which he will
say once, then again... and yes, again, within the space of a few breaths. He
has it! He has his headline grabbing slogan! I can picture him running home to
his wife (or perhaps his mummy [mommy for US readers—I’m not referring to dead
Egyptians wrapped up in bandages]): ‘Look at me! Look at me! I’m on the front
page again!’

This is the man who
reduces important issues to the level of the school sports day: We are all
called to be part of Team Australia [read: Team Abbott]. He is so happy when
he sees us jumping up and down in place: ‘Ooooh, pick me, Tony! Pick me!’
Thanks to our illustrious Prime Minister, we can now be assured that it’s okay
to go back into Iraq, for the third time, because ISIL (or whatever it is
today) is a ‘death cult’. Never mind hundreds and even thousands of years of
history in that region, of conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and centuries
of interference from the West. It can all be nicely summed up in a two word
label: death cult. It’s all safely and neatly packaged away.

This is the man who
threatened to ‘shirt front’ Vladimir Putin when he comes to Australia for the
G20 meeting in November. For those of you who have no idea what ‘shirt front’
means, pop over to You Tube where I’m sure you will find plenty of examples—it
is a term from Australia’s home grown brand of football. Yep, that’s really
mature and constructive, Tony. Tony really knows how to calm down a volatile situation
with carefully considered words. In the meantime, Putin swats the mosquito
buzzing in his ear.

Whenever I see Tony
Abbott, whenever I hear him speak, what comes to mind is the school yard, during
those first two or three terrifying years in high school. To a thirteen or
fourteen year old boy, everything’s pretty straightforward. No need to think,
really, testosterone does that for us. The school bully or, even worse, that
dreaded high school prefect: that’s our Tony. It’s all about getting to the top
of the pile and imposing our will upon those below us. An argument reaches the
dizzying heights of:

‘Yes I can!’

‘No you can’t!’

‘Yes I can!’

‘No you...’

So if any of you out
there in the world of grownups are thinking of visiting Australia, be very
careful. Tony Abbott might just want to shove your head down the toilet bowl
and flush.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

I am always somewhat reluctant to review the first part of
an intended series of books. Just as the story is incomplete, so must the
review be incomplete and provisional. It is difficult to comment on the merits
of a plot which is unfinished. This is the case here.

Lost Innocence is
the first part of an adventure thriller set in Bangkok, Thailand. Michael is a
young, budding artist, who travels to Thailand to sketch the working girls of
Bangkok, before commencing studies at an art school in London. Before long he
finds himself in trouble. He is arrested on trumped up charges for having raped
and beaten an underage girl, and thrown into the notorious Bangkok ‘Hilton’. He
is given the option to pay a substantial fine and be released, or remain in
prison to fight the charges. He decides, on principle, to fight the charges.
While in prison he befriends a convicted drug smuggler, John, who shows him the
ropes.

Michael’s arrest precipitates a rescue mission, first by his
father, Stan, and then by his grandfather, Nigel, a prominent and wealthy
lawyer. Finally, a private detective, Harvey Goulding, is hired to help unravel
the mess. Along with the intrigue and machinations as the drama unfolds, the
author sketches the complex and not entirely harmonious relationships between
the three generations of men.

Palmer does an excellent job of taking the reader inside the
Thai prison and legal system. He also provides a convincing account of the
Bangkok sex industry. The story is interesting, although I was never quite
convinced by Michael’s determination to fight the charges rather than pay the
fine, given the horrific conditions to which he is subjected. Neither his
motivation—a rather vague sense of principle—nor his strength of character
seemed to warrant this. The generational interactions are potentially
interesting, but we are not given sufficient back story to understand the
strained relationships, particularly between the father and grandfather.
Neither of these men was particularly likeable. Their wives, left behind in
England, play only a minor role and, again, we are not given enough background
to understand these relationships. There are moments when the story
morphs—perhaps not surprisingly, given the setting—into a kind of soft porn,
which is well written if a little predictable.

The author makes the unwise decision to narrate Michael’s
part of the narrative in the first person, and the rest from various third
person points of view. The choice is strange because, after the early chapters,
Michael plays very little part in the story. Locked up in prison, the capacity of
this character to move the story along is very limited. It is true that Michael’s
personal account of his arrest and his time in prison is very vivid, but I
think this could have been achieved just as effectively with an intimate, third
person narrative.

The introduction of the private detective into the story
provides a lift, but comes rather late in the narrative. His Thai female assistant,
Bo, is probably one of the most interesting characters, and certainly the only
female character to be given more than a bit role.

There are times when the grammar, and particularly the
punctuation, are rather poor here. And there is a moment that made me cringe
when we are presented with a dreadful, caricatured German accent.

This is not a bad start to the series. I think it would have
been reasonable in this first volume to expect more back story, particularly
concerning the father and grandfather, which would have leant more credibility to
the conflicts between them. It will be interesting to see where the author
takes this in future. I give it three and a half stars, rounding it down to
three where necessary.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

I’m glad to say it’s
been a busy week editing, without much time for either reading or writing. On
this Sunday afternoon I have time to take a breather and reflect upon... jigsaw
puzzles.

This is a love from my
childhood and teenage years that has extended into adulthood. There was a
hiatus in there of perhaps twenty years during which I kicked the habit, but I
have fallen off the wagon in recent months. It all began last year when I
visited my daughter in Melbourne and she had a puzzle on the go. This was
followed up by a Christmas present or two that were—you guessed it—jigsaw
puzzles. Since then they have appeared from time to time as gifts, or I have
indulged myself. There was a time when I would embark upon a three-thousand
piecer, but these days (partly due to space requirements) I have to be content
with one thousand pieces. It’s a nice size in terms of both time and space.

So what is the
attraction?

As with many things,
it is initially the challenge. I’m not so
keen on the challenge that I would like to reconstitute a polar bear in a
blizzard. It’s always more fun when I there are features on the pieces that can
help locate its position, in addition to its shape. There is the final
satisfaction when the puzzle is complete; and many minor satisfactions (about
1000 of them) when each piece finds its place.

I find the process strangely
meditative. My mind can wonder far and wide while a part of it becomes attuned
to shapes and colours. It can also become a little obsessive: just one more
piece! There were many times in my teens, particularly during the school
holidays, when I would be up until three or four in the morning, searching for
that ‘one more’ piece.

I do have some system
when I do a puzzle. I have to start with the edges. I could spout some ‘philosophy’
at this point about the value of working within a framework. But I won’t. If
there are large patches of sky or some other fairly uniform colour, I like to
do these early on, to get them out of the way. I like to leave the more
interesting features to last. I would find it a little tedious if I had to
finish with a boring, uniform feature. I’m sure there is a philosophy here,
too, and that some people will find intriguing clues to my personality.

Aside from these
systematic elements, my approach to the puzzle tends to be multi-faceted. Sometimes
I will look for a piece to fill a space. Sometimes I will look for the space a
piece fills. Sometimes colour is the key; other times it is shape. Whatever
works best and is most appropriate at the time.

I am not now going to
wax lyrical, in a Forrest-Gump-ish fashion, about life bein’ like a jigsaw
puzzle... It probably is and it probably isn’t. Personally I think life is much more like
an artichoke.

Feel free to
philosophise or analyse my personality if you wish. Right now I have some
pieces just begging to be put into place.

**********************

**FOR A LIMITED TIME**

Maybe they'll remember me is half price at Smashwords using this code: WF77N. Just $2.50